Excelsior Correspondent
JAMMU, Sept 27: Accusing the BJP of using the coercive apparatus of state to silence the voice of dissent, Harsh Dev Singh, chairman JKNPP and former Minister sought a judicial probe into the arrest of NPP district president Kathua Robin Sharma and other party workers for lodging a peaceful protest against Lakhanpur Toll Plaza.
He said that NPP which had launched a series of peaceful protests for disbanding multiple Toll Plazas installed in and around Jammu were being threatened and bullied by ruling party leaders for quite some time. Several complaints had been filed in this regard with Government which had however overlooked the same under the pressure of political masters.
“Rather than booking the criminals and vandals, the police had chosen to arrest the NPP leaders who had been kept in Kathua police station for the last three days since their arrest on 25th September. The most offending aspect of the arrests was handcuffing of the NPP leaders and the shabby treatment doled out to them by police,” Harsh Dev said while addressing a press conference here today.
Asserting that there were a plethora of Supreme Court judgments wherein the Apex Court had disallowed the handcuffing of arrested persons except in case of proclaimed offenders, fugitives or where the police had bonafide reasons to believe that the arrested person could abscond, Singh expressed his dismay over the open defiance of even the SC orders by some overzealous officers of police.
Raising questions over the illegal arrest of NPP leaders and their handcuffing, Singh said that it was yet another glaring example of BJP’s politics of vendetta and vengeance. The BJP Government did not handcuff the dreaded gangster Vikas Dubey after his arrest from M P, but the nationalist NPP leaders were given such kind of treatment which should serve as an eye opener for the general public, asserted the NPP chairman.
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